Review

Art

Culture

Ethics

War & peace

4 November 2025

5 min read

Can we stop killing each other?

How art, theology, and moral imagination confront our oldest instinct

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A 17th Century painting of Moses and the brazen cross.

Luca Giordano, The Brazen Serpent, c.1690, oil on canvas.

Compton Verney, photography by Jamie Woodley.

What more important question can there be for humanity, Jago Cooper, Executive Director of the Sainsbury Centre, asks than ‘Can we stop killing each other?’ The Sainsbury Centre’s radical exhibition programme explores the big issues in contemporary society (see my article ‘Life Is more important than art’) so has rapidly arrived at the point where it is exploring what has wrong with the world when killing occurs and how can we put it right.

Cooper sets out the ground that this series of exhibitions seeks to cover: ‘From interpersonal violence to state level conflict, killing has spread its devastating impact throughout all human cultures across the centuries. Why does this violence occur? And can it be better prevented at a time when increased societal pressures of population growth, resource scarcity, human migration and rapid environmental change make the risk of conflict higher? Every day we read about horrifying acts playing out locally and internationally, but what is the answer to stopping them?’

Can we stop killing each other? includes an installation by Aotearoa/New Zealand artist Anton Forde, a series of new paintings reflecting on the refugee crisis by Ethiopian artist Tesfaye Urgessa; presentations of historical artworks such as Claude Monet’s ‘The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil’, and an exhibition spanning Shakespearean tragedy to Hitchcockian spectacle, which asks questions of violent stage and screen narratives, plus (from November) ‘Seeds of Hate and Hope’ highlighting personal artistic responses to global atrocities, such as genocides, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It starts, however, with a room displaying Biblically themed explorations of this question. ‘Denunciation of Cain’ by G.F. Watts depicts the after-effects of the first murder with Watts viewing Cain as a symbol of ‘reckless, selfish humanity’. A pair of paintings by Luca Giordano then take us deeper into the ambiguities of our human responses to anger and violence. ‘The Brazen Serpent’, tells the story of the Israelites’ journey from Mount Sinai in Egypt to the Promised Land of Canaan. On this journey, a plague of poisonous serpents punishes the Israelites for their disobedience and lack of faith. Moses is instructed by God to make a bronze, or ‘brazen’, serpent that will heal those that repent. The curators ask, ‘Does this portrayal of killing as a punishment set a cultural precedent, or establish a moral code for right and wrong?’ Alongside is ‘The Judgement of Solomon’ in which two women both claim to be the mother of a living child and where the true mother is revealed by means of an order that the child to be cut in half with a sword and shared. The true mother reveals herself as the one who will give the baby away to protect the child’s life. Here, the threat of violence is used to bring about justice.

William Hogarth’s print series The Four Stages of Cruelty, with verses by Reverend James Townley, reveals how violence escalates and shows how a lack of moral supervision can lead to a life of crime. Finally, Matt Collishaw’s series of thirteen photographic works entitled ’Last Meal on Death Row, Texas’ alludes to the number of apostles at the Last Supper while depicting the last meals chosen by condemned prisoners on death row in the state of Texas, United States.

The curators suggest that: ‘The artworks in this gallery, and beyond, suggest that there is a choice between peace and conflict and that moral stories exist to guide us towards making ethical decisions in real life. Art provides a powerful connection through which to experience life at its most chaotic and incomprehensible, enabling us to pause and reflect on the darkest aspects of human existence. It can also create vital opportunities for society to mourn and remember victims of violence, and to come together in acts of healing and repair.’

These images and the Bible stories on which they are based give us more than simple moral guidance, however. They also provide an explanation for the existence of conflict between human beings and reveal God’s subversion of that ingrained human tendency.

In the story of Cain and Abel, Cain is jealous of Abel and kills him as a result. The anthropologist René Girard suggests that this story reveals the way in which we consistently act as human beings. We desire something that is possessed by someone else and become disturbed through our longing for what we don’t have. We resolve our disturbance by creating a scapegoat of the person or people who appear to have or prevent us from having what it is we desire. When the scapegoat is killed, we can gain what we desire and also release the sense of disturbance that we feel.

This scapegoat mechanism becomes expressed in religions involving human sacrifices as scapegoats to appease their gods. In the story told within the pages of scripture, it is out of such religions that Abraham is called to form a people who do not sacrifice other human beings, but instead use animals as their scapegoats and sacrifices. Jesus is later born into this people who have subverted the existing practice of scapegoating and he further subverts this practice because, as he is crucified, God becomes the scapegoat that is killed. Once God’s Son has become the scapegoat, for those who follow him, the scapegoat mechanism is undermined and the scapegoating of others should no longer be possible.

In ‘The Judgement of Solomon’, the threat of violence is used to reveal the desire of the woman who had taken the mother’s child and the self-sacrifice of the true mother. On the cross, the violence meted out to Jesus reveals the full horror of the scapegoating mechanism in the torture and violent death of the wholly innocent one.

Jesus explicitly equated his crucifixion with the raising up of the bronze serpent that brought healing because in that story, when it is raised, as Jesus also was, the image of the source of the poison in the lives of human beings became the source of healing. That is also the promise that Christianity holds out to us in relation to the effect of Jesus’ crucifixion where he becomes sin for us. It heals us of our absolute need to scapegoat and harm others.

Can We Stop Killing Each Other? Sainsbury Centre:

Tiaki Ora ∞ Protecting Life: Anton Forde, 2 August 2025 – 19 April 2026

Eyewitness, 20 September 2025 – 15 February 2026

Roots of Resilience: Tesfaye Urgessa, 20 September 2025 – 15 February 2026

The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour: Reflections on Peace, 20 September 2025 – 11 January 2026

Seeds of Hate and Hope, 28 November 2025 – 17 May 2026

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Article

Culture

Economics

Ethics

1 May 2025

6 min read

The rights and wrongs of making money with meme coins

When does investing become speculating, or even addictive gambling?

Laurence Fletcher

Laurence is a journalist at the Financial Times.

A montage shows Trump with a raised fist against other images of him and the phrase 'fight fight fight'.

$Trump coin marketing image.

gettrumpmemes.com,

Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs may have driven sharp swings in global financial markets, but his actions in markets a few months earlier were in some ways even more peculiar.

On the Friday before his inauguration as the 47th US President in January, the Republican surprised many with the launch of the $TRUMP memecoin, described by its website as “the only official Trump meme”. The cryptocurrency token, in which Trump’s family business owned a stake, initially soared in value to more than $14bn over that following weekend.

Then, on the Sunday, Trump’s wife Melania launched her own memecoin, $MELANIA, which reached a value of $8.5bn. Even the pastor who spoke at the president’s inauguration subsequently launched his own memecoin.

For those wondering what exactly a memecoin is, you are not alone. In short, they are a form of cryptocurrency - an asset class that itself has attracted plenty of questions about its substance and purpose - representing online viral moments. They have no fundamental value or business model and, according to the US securities regulator, “typically have limited or no use or functionality”.

Donald and Melania Trump’s coins subsequently plunged in price, but still have a value of around $2.5bn and $214mn respectively, according to website CoinMarketCap.

There are plenty of others in existence. PEPE, based on a comic frog, has a value of around $3.6bn; BONK, a cartoon dog, has a market cap of $1.5bn; and PNUT, a reference to a squirrel euthanised by authorities in New York and about which Trump was allegedly “fired up” (although doubt has since been cast on the president’s involvement in the matter), is still valued at around $174mn, despite having fallen sharply in price.

Dogecoin, seen as the world’s first memecoin and originally created as a joke, boasts a market value of around $25bn. (There are other memecoins which may not be suitable for these pages).

Some people’s willingness to buy an “asset” with no use or fundamental value may seem strange to more traditional investors. But it can be viewed as just one manifestation of the speculative investor behaviour evident since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and, indeed, at times throughout history.

The price of Bitcoin recently rose above $100,000, despite many investors still viewing it as having little or no value (in 2023 the UK’s Treasury select committee described cryptocurrencies as having “no intrinsic value, huge price volatility and no discernible social good”). In early 2021, shares in GameStop - a loss-making US video games retailer that some hedge funds were betting against - rocketed as much as 2,400 per cent, as retail investors piled in, many with the aim of inflicting pain on the hedge fund short sellers (in that respect at least, a highly successful strategy that became the subject of the film Dumb Money). The huge rise in AI and other tech stocks in recent years - until the recent tariff-driven volatility - has also been described as a bubble by some commentators.

Whether or not such episodes can be compared to infamous bouts of speculative mania in history depends on your point of view (and often can only be judged with the benefit of hindsight) - be it the 17th century Dutch tulip bulb mania, shares in the South Sea Company in the 18th century or the dotcom boom and bust of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

But it does give rise to the question of when investment should start to be described as speculation or even as gambling? And what are the rights and wrongs of any of those activities?

There can be negative effects, for instance if the actions of speculators force businesses in the real economy to change their plans or divert time and resources...

Gambling can be thought of as risking a stake on, for instance, the result of a game of chance or sport in the hope of a bigger payout. While often the result is purely down to chance, in some cases a strategy or an element of research (for instance of a horse or football team’s form) can be used. Investment, in contrast, tends to involve purported economic utility and assets believed to have some sort of underlying value, and holds the hope of future profit (although there are also plenty of bad investments or those that have gone to zero). While an investor must be prepared to lose their entire stake, in some cases such an event is relatively unlikely (for instance, if they buy a fund tracking the performance of a major stock exchange). Speculation is harder to define, but is generally seen as shorter term than investment, with more chance of a bigger gain or loss, and dependent on price fluctuations. Rightly or wrongly, the term has a more negative connotation than investment.

One writer who explored the ethics of these activities was Oswald von Nell-Breuning, a Jesuit theologian and economist who served as an adviser to the Pope and who was banned from publishing under the Nazis.

While he found that “one general definition cannot capture all the nuances” of speculation, he identified two different types of speculative activity - one that was purely trying to make a profit from financial market trading, and one based on trying to create a viable business. (See this article in the Catholic Social Science Review for a fuller explanation of Nell-Breuning’s views on speculation).

As the CSSR article shows, Nell-Breuning found that there can be positive effects from speculation - one might think of better liquidity and price discovery in a market, while, in commodity futures markets, speculators allow producers to hedge risk.

But he also argued that there can be negative effects, for instance if the actions of speculators force businesses in the real economy to change their plans or divert time and resources away from production.

And whereas gambling typically takes place within a circle of players who have chosen to take part, speculation, he wrote, can affect a greater portion of society - for instance, if it affects the price of shares or bonds they hold.

The Bible - on which Nell-Breuning’s faith and analysis was based - does not take a prescriptive approach to such activities. But it does provide some interesting guidance.

An entrepreneurial approach to business and investment is applauded, for instance when the writer of the book of Proverbs (traditionally believed to be King Solomon) praises the virtues of “an excellent wife”. These include investing in a field and using her earnings from business to plant a vineyard, and feeding her family from her gains.

Jesus tells a story of a master who, before going on a journey, gives his property to his servants, each according to their ability. To one he gives five “talents” (a large unit of money), to a second two and to a third servant he gives one.

The first servant trades with his talents and makes five more talents - a 100 per cent profit - and is applauded by the master on his return. The second servant also trades and similarly makes two more talents and is again applauded.

But the third servant, being afraid and believing the master to be “a hard man”, hides the money in a hole in the ground. He is condemned as “wicked and slothful”, and told that he should at least have put the money in the bank.

While Jesus’s story may primarily be about how we view God’s nature, how we use our God-given abilities and whether or not we can take risks in faith for Him, it is also hard not to see investment and indeed wise speculation as being virtuous activities here. Putting the money into a bank account is, in this story anyway, more of a fallback option.

But the Bible also warns us against putting money above all else in our lives. The love of money is, famously, a root of all sorts of evil, while we are also told to be content with what we have, and that “wealth gained hastily will dwindle”.

Nell-Breuning similarly warns that a “get-rich-quick” mindset, when this is placed above all else, can be harmful, and advises caution in situations where the lure of big profits can lead the speculator into market manipulation or fraud.

After all, both gambling and crypto trading have the potential to become dangerous and damaging addictions needing treatment.

Ultimately, Nell-Breuning struggled to come to a simple conclusion on the question of whether speculation, in and of itself, is morally wrong. It is, he wrote, a judgment call for those involved.

When making such decisions ourselves, his - and the Bible’s - warnings may be worth bearing in mind.